The Empire Strikes Back? Race and Immigration in Twentieth Century Britain
Course Convenor: Dr Gavin RandCourse Code: HIST 1019
How has immigration ‘changed’ Britain? What is Britishness and just who are the British? Is Britain still great? Was it ever?
‘The Empire Strikes Back?’ explores these questions by examining the history of Britishness in the twentieth century, focussing especially on the impacts of race and immigration on British national identity. Charting British history from the highpoint of empire through world wars, post-war 'decline' and decolonisation, the course asks how Britain has responded to the changes of the twentieth century. We will ask, for example, what the treatment of Irish and Jewish immigrants before 1914 can tell us about contemporary debates on asylum seekers and economic migrants? What role did the colonies play in Britain's two world wars, and how were colonial subjects treated in Britain during the wars? How did the loss of empire and the process of decolonisation change popular notions of Britishness? What caused mass immigration? In what ways has empire and its legacies continued to play a part in British national identity? Crucially, the course will also explore the various ways in which historians have analysed and explained these changes.
Indicative Reading
Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The cultural politics of race and nation, (London, 1992)
Wendy Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, Race and British National Identity, 1945-1964, (London, 1998)
Anne Marie Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, (Cambridge, 1994)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)